How to Save $$

MTH and I have our own version of the Bank of America "Keep the Change" program. If you haven't seen the commercials, basically they round up each of your purchases to the nearest dollar and put the difference into a savings account. MTH has a pickle jar that he throws all of his change into when he gets home. As you know, we've moved to a new place. Well, that pickle jar was really heavy (mostly with pennies) so we took about half of them to the Chevy Chase Bank. The reason we went there is not because we're customers but because they have a change counting machine that charges no fee. At the grocery store, it charges a 7 cents on the dollar!! We ended up with $100 in change! So, we went out for a nice dinner last night.

Of course, the one benefit of the BofA program - interest.

Something to Remember

On Monday, I tried to use my credit card but it was blocked. So, when I got home, I checked my home phone messages and sure enough, the credit card company had called me. I called back to find out that my card number had been stolen and had been used for fraudulent charges. One of the charges was for $2100 worth of items from the Coach website. You may laugh since you know that I love Coach but when I though about it more, it's actually not a laughing matter. There are a few different things that those people might have done with the merchandise. One is that they could have just wanted to send it back for a refund. Btu, that's unlikely because these days I think that most companies make you get the refund on the card that you bought it with. The more likely scenario is that they were buying them in order to sell them cheap on the street or on eBay. So, next time you see a street vendor with a great deal on a purse or you think about bidding on an auction on eBay to pay a lower price for an item, remember that it could have been stolen. But, it wasn't necessarily stolen from a store (only affecting the store); it could have been stolen using someone's credit card. That person may not be as lucky as me since the credit card company in my case was able to block the charges and never thought that I was making the charges.